Viewpoint: Alliance and its ongoing fight to protect Idaho grizzlies

Michael Garrity

This month, the Trump Administration filed a "petition for rehearing en banc" in the federal appeals court, seeking to overturn a significant legal victory won by Alliance for the Wild Rockies back in June.

In the June court decision, the federal appeals court found that Alliance has a legal right to challenge the Trump Administration's 2018 decision to exempt a highly controversial logging project in Idaho (the Hanna Flats Project) from environmental review. The lawsuit seeks to protect habitat for the rare, imperiled Selkirk grizzly population in northern Idaho. The June court decision followed eight years of persistent, dogged litigation by the Alliance.

Selkirk Grizzly Bears

The Selkirk grizzly bear population is in dire straits. There are only about 50 bears in the population, and the minimum needed for recovery is 100 bears. The bears suffer from human-caused mortality at a rate of about 2.7 bears killed by humans per year, and those rates violate the limits set by the government for recovery.

This mortality rate is so high for this tiny population that there are only three years on record with higher mortality since record keeping began over 30 years ago. There is really no hope of recovery for this imperiled population unless the government starts complying with the law.

The Lawsuit -- 8 Years & Still Going Strong

The legal issue in this case comes from the 2003 Healthy Forest Restoration Act. In part, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act allows the Forest Service to exempt logging projects in the "Wildland Urban Interface" from environmental analysis and protection measures normally required under the National Environmental Policy Act. This weakens protections for fish and wildlife habitat under the National Forest Management Act and Endangered Species Act.

Importantly, the "wildland-urban interface" is defined by the law as a very specific location. Yet, the Forest Service routinely ignores the legal definition and attempts to misuse the exemption to log miles away from communities to benefit the private profit margins of the timber industry.

In this case, the federal court in Idaho and the federal appellate court have both found that the Forest Service violated the law by ignoring the definition of wildland urban interface. The government's weak argument in response was that public comments on the Hanna Flats project had not been specific enough to notify the Forest Service that it was breaking the law. In other words, the government claimed ignorance of its own laws. In June, the federal appellate court rejected that weak defense, holding that the public does not need to submit public comments when the Forest Service refuses to conduct an environmental review.

The government is not happy that it continues to lose this case. It does not want to follow the law. And so, this month, the Trump Administration filed a request for rehearing "en banc" of this case. This means that the government wants to reargue this case in front of a panel of 11 federal judges. The outcome will be legally-binding precedent for all future cases in all federal courts within the Ninth Circuit: California, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii.

We Need Your Help

We will not give up the fight for the imperiled Selkirk grizzly bear in Idaho. We will hold the government accountable when it breaks its own laws.

Join Us.

Make a donation so that we can hire the best lawyers in the country to protect the important legal precedent set in this case.

Mike Garrity is the Executive Director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies.